By the time I discovered Jijide at Esxence 2025, I already had a sense I’d enjoy their fragrances. Several Italian perfume enthusiasts had given Riso and Grano rave reviews, and my experience confirmed the excitement: the booth was beautifully curated, the staff kind and knowledgeable, and two fragrances stood out.
Oltre (Italian for “beyond”), created by up-and-coming perfumer Edda Salvadori, charmed me with its evocation of beauty rituals at a vanity table filled with the scent of lavender face powder, violet lipstick, and old-fashioned rose water.
Grano (Italian for “wheat”) by French-Lebanese rising-star perfumer Nour Akoum drew me in with the familiar comfort of freshly risen bread dough, mingled with the scent of dew-dotted grass wafting in through the window.
Jijide was born in 2016 from a collaboration between friends, two from Italy and one from China, to facilitate and celebrate the ways cultures connect and find common ground. Through three distinct but complementary collections (Conversations, Dialogue, and Personality), Jijide was conceived to express multi-cultural sensory language, highlighting the idea that true beauty stems from different and sometimes contrasting voices, views, and perspectives coming together and sharing ideas, sensibilities, open-mindedness, and mutual respect.
In 2026, I was lucky to connect with the people behind Jijide not once, but twice within the same month.
At Esxence 2026, I visited the brand’s booth and met Angela Gorgoglione, beauty writer and member of the Jijide staff, who introduced us to Talea, the brand’s newest release created by Chinese perfumer, Tianle Feng. Talea features chrysanthemum, an unconventional flower typically associated with death and mourning in Italy’s culture. Talea disconnects from those biases and conventions to represent rebirth and authenticity through the bold and herbaceous essence of chrysanthemum blended with Sichuan pepper, saffron, vetiver, and resins. During the Esxence visit, we were also introduced to Chiara Vezzosi, the talented photographer who took beautiful shots of chrysanthemum flowers for the Talea campaign.
At ScentFest 2026 SF, I met Adam James Cavallari, one of the founders of Jijide, and I had the opportunity of talking with him on more than one occasion. I appreciated hearing about the brand and the sneak peeks into upcoming projects. His enthusiasm was contagious, and I look forward to seeing imminent and future releases!
Enough from me though. You can learn about Jijide and the founders’ vision in more depth in my interview below.
Interview
Jijide’s concept is influenced by conversations and dialogues between cultures. How do you work with perfumers to ensure that cultural sensibility is incorporated into the ingredient selection and aesthetic inspiration of each fragrance?
We incorporate cultural sensibility into each fragrance through a collaborative process where stories, personal experiences, and open dialogue shape both the inspiration and the choice of ingredients.
When we decide to collaborate with a perfumer, the first question is never what can they create? but rather who are they? We look for people whose values align with ours: respect for different cultures, openness, curiosity, and a sincere interest in human stories. We believe that meaningful fragrances come from meaningful relationships, so every project starts with a genuine personal and creative connection.
At the beginning, an idea is often just a spark. It is not a finished brief waiting to be executed. Instead, it grows through conversations, exchanges of ideas, and shared reflections. These dialogues usually involve Jijide and the perfumer, but sometimes they also include other voices that can enrich the creative process. A recent example is Talea, from our Conversations with Perfume collection, where the dialogue extended to the students at the Italian Perfumery Institute, bringing new perspectives and insights into the project.
In this process, everyone contributes something different. The perfumer brings their artistic vision, sensitivity, and experience. We bring the cultural narrative and the values that define Jijide. Other contributors may bring fresh ideas, personal stories, or alternative ways of looking at the same theme. Together, these exchanges help shape the fragrance organically.
Our role is not to dictate a formula or tell people exactly what to create. Instead, we provide a clear direction based on the principles that are central to Jijide: respect for cultures and diversity, authenticity in storytelling, and a responsible approach to sustainability. Within that framework, collaborators are free to interpret the narrative through their own creative voice.
This is important because we do not believe cultures can be represented through stereotypes or reduced to a list of ingredients. For us, cultural dialogue is something much deeper. It comes from listening, sharing experiences, and embracing different perspectives. The fragrance becomes the result of a genuine exchange rather than an attempt to translate a culture into a simple olfactory formula.
In many ways, every Jijide fragrance is the outcome of a balance between careful human connection and creative freedom. We choose to work with people who share our values, and then we trust them to bring those values to life through scent. That balance is what allows our creations to feel both culturally respectful and genuinely authentic.
Can you describe a fragrance that changed significantly, from start to finish, because of what you and your team learned from another culture or tradition during its development?
Absolutely. A great example is Talea, from our new Conversations collection.
What makes this fragrance special is that the same story was explored through very different perspectives. The author of Talea is Tianle Feng, an experienced Chinese perfumer with a deep understanding of both fragrance and cultural symbolism. Throughout the project, he engaged in an ongoing dialogue with a class of artistic perfumery students from the Italian Perfumery Institute. While Tianle authored the fragrance itself, the students made an important contribution to the creative process through their ideas, interpretations, and discussions. The exchange between Tianle’s vision, the students’ perspectives, and Jijide’s cultural narrative became a valuable part of the journey that shaped Talea.
It was fascinating to see how the same concept could be interpreted in different ways and how those different viewpoints created unexpected connections. The starting point was the chrysanthemum, a flower whose meaning changes across cultures and different parts of the world. We wanted to celebrate both its beauty and its significance, so we invited the students to give the flower a contemporary interpretation. What fascinated them most was not only its aesthetic elegance, but also its extraordinary strength and resilience. From there, they began to see the chrysanthemum as a symbol of self-discovery, inner balance, and the search for personal serenity, bringing a new perspective to the story behind the fragrance.
As the conversations evolved, so did the fragrance. One example is the opening, which was inspired by an idea that emerged during the discussions with the students. They described it as a “golden cage”: the place where people often take refuge behind a version of themselves designed to please others. To translate that idea into scent, Tianle combined ingredients from different cultural backgrounds, including Greek saffron alongside two fruits strongly associated with Asia, kumquat and yuzu.
In its early stages, the fragrance was much greener and expressed a stronger Asian identity. But through the ongoing dialogue between Jijide, Tianle, and the students, the project gradually evolved. New interpretations emerged, different cultural references found common ground, and the fragrance became something richer and more balanced than any of us had initially imagined.
The result is a scent where these influences remain clearly visible while existing in harmony with one another. In many ways, Talea reflects exactly what we mean by cultural dialogue: not one perspective replacing another, but different voices coming together to create something new. I still remember the emotion we felt when we smelled the final version for the first time. It was one of those rare moments when we realized that the fragrance had become much more than the original idea that inspired it.
What conversations and dialogues are you hoping to spark between fragrance enthusiasts when they wear your fragrances?
We hope our fragrances spark curiosity and encourage people to explore parts of the world they may never have experienced before.
At Jijide, we do not try to create simplified interpretations of cultures. Instead, we aim to tell authentic stories through fragrance. Our hope is that a scent can become a bridge between people and places, allowing them to travel with their imagination and connect with experiences beyond their everyday lives.
For example, we love the idea that someone in Italy could smell Jijide Riso and feel transported to China, while someone in Shanghai might recognize something familiar and personal in the very same fragrance. Those moments of connection are incredibly meaningful to us because they show how scent can transcend geography and bring people closer together.
We also hope our fragrances inspire conversations about the world we are building together. We regularly collaborate with young people and emerging creative voices because they bring fresh perspectives, new ideas, and a different way of looking at the future. Through our creations, we want to share that sense of openness, curiosity, and optimism.
In many ways, this philosophy is embedded in the name Jijide itself. It comes from the Chinese expression Jījí de (积极的), which can mean being optimistic, proactive, and open to possibilities. Those values are at the heart of everything we do.
So, if there is one conversation we hope to inspire, it is this: a conversation about discovering one another with curiosity rather than judgment, embracing different perspectives, and looking toward the future with a positive and open mindset.
I’m thankful to Adam and Andrea for sharing so much about their vision and creative process.
Explore the collections on Jjjide’s official website.
Photos by Sarah and me.
